Conventionally, an apparatus/system that causes a vehicle to perform a requested operation in response to a remote operation request issued from a vehicle user is known (for example, see Patent Document 1).
The apparatus/system disclosed in Patent Document 1 serves to allow vehicle operations such as the closing of the windows and the turning off of the hazard lamps to be performed via remote control by the user using a portable phone.
[Patent Document 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-102939
The related-art apparatus/system disclosed in Patent Document 1 described above is configured such that the user uses a portable phone to remotely control the vehicle via a center. Since the user cannot see the vehicle at the time of remote control in most cases, the operation that has already been performed may be needlessly requested through remote control if the condition of the vehicle at the time of the remote operation request differs from the vehicle condition that was checked by using the portable phone last time (e.g., another user may have acted on the vehicle on the spot). For example, although the windows are already closed, a remote operation request to close the windows may be issued.
In the related-art apparatus/system disclosed in Patent Document 1, the center transmits to the vehicle a remote operation request issued from the user without checking the necessity of the requested operation, and, then, the vehicle performs the requested operation without checking the necessity of the user's remote operation request transmitted from the center (see paragraphs [0052] and [0028] of Patent Document 1).
This undermines the responsiveness of the result report that is sent to the vehicle user who has requested a remote operation (in this case, such a report serves to inform the user that the requested remote operation has been completed, or that the requested remote operation has failed but the current condition of the vehicle already satisfies the intended purpose). From a different perspective, it can be said that no communication between the center and the vehicle was necessary since the vehicle did not perform any operation in response to the operation instruction from the center.
Accordingly, there is a need for a vehicle remote control apparatus and system that have improved responsiveness with respect to a result report that is to be sent to the vehicle user having requested a remote operation.